“Surely you remember me,” he said.  “I could not forget your face, even though you have exchanged a blue coat for a black one.”

De Catinat grasped the hand which was held out to him.

“I remember you well, De Bonneville, and the journey that we made together to Fort Frontenac, but it was not for me to claim your friendship, now that things have gone amiss with me.”

“Tut, man; once my friend always my friend.”

“I feared, too, that my acquaintance would do you little good with yonder dark-cowled friar who is glowering behind you.”

“Well, well, you know how it is with us here.  Frontenac could keep them in their place, but De la Barre was as clay in their hands, and this new one promises to follow in his steps.  What with the Sulpitians at Montreal and the Jesuits here, we poor devils are between the upper and the nether stones.  But I am grieved from my heart to give such a welcome as this to an old comrade, and still more to his wife.”

“What is to be done, then?”

“You are to be confined to the ship until she sails, which will be in a week at the furthest.”

“And then?”

“You are to be carried home in her and handed over to the Governor of Rochelle to be sent back to Paris.  Those are Monsieur de Denonville’s orders, and if they be not carried out to the letter, then we shall have the whole hornet’s nest about our ears.”

De Catinat groaned as he listened.  After all their strivings and trials and efforts, to return to Paris, the scorn of his enemies, and an object of pity to his friends, was too deep a humiliation.  He flushed with shame at the very thought.  To be led back like the home-sick peasant who has deserted from his regiment!  Better one spring into the broad blue river beneath him, were it not for little pale-faced Adele who had none but him to look to.  It was so tame!  So ignominious!  And yet in this floating prison, with a woman whose fate was linked with his own, what hope was there of escape?

De Bonneville had left him, with a few blunt words of sympathy, but the friar still paced the deck with a furtive glance at him from time to time, and two soldiers who were stationed upon the poop passed and repassed within a few yards of him.  They had orders evidently to mark his movements.  Heart-sick he leaned over the side watching the Indians in their paint and feathers shooting backwards and forwards in their canoes, and staring across at the town where the gaunt gable ends of houses and charred walls marked the effect of the terrible fire which a few years before had completely destroyed the lower part.

As he stood gazing, his attention was drawn away by the swish of oars, and a large boat full of men passed immediately underneath where he stood.